What is Lean Manufacturing?

A shot down the shop floor

So what is lean manufacturing, it's a term we use often...and one thrown around loosely.  The term was first seen in the work of Jim Womack and John Krafcik (1990) in the book The Machine that Changed the World...using the word to describe Toyota's way of "leaning" the process and inventory.  A great term, and very appropriate for the situation, but the problem with the word "lean", and all great one word descriptions, is that no definition follows.  Words such as flow, just-in-time, cell all have a similar downfall...without knowledge of the whole definition the word can be used in almost any company to describe some process.

In fact, I don't talk to any company leader today who doesn't claim to be in some form of lean or have a cell or two "set-up".  But as American's we kind of miss the boat.  Toyota on the other hand has a deep understanding of "Lean"...which they would never call it, but their "Toyota Way" is what Lean strives to be.  The "Toyota Way" is deep in personal obligation, in a culture not built on tools but the people that came up with those tools.

So 5S, Kanban, Pull System, ect. are all tools brought about because Toyota focused on their people....and they've done this over a long time.  Where the rest of us can benefit is that we can teach those tools to our employees and not have to wait 80 something years for them to develop.  But HOW we teach those tools is critical.

The approach eventually followed in my company is "Here are some neat concepts (lean tools) on how to control inventory, create flow, and stay organized.  On a separate note, here is our goal for the next 6 months, to transform our manufacturing into a assembly line type of flow all based off customer demand.  Now, how do we get there?  The natural response for people when given a big goal is to either ignore it, or stress over the scope of what has to be done.

But by starting to show "example" projects of how to organize, clean, build better flow,  map the process, ect they start to revert to these lean tools to meet the big goal.  

The question still remains for us, have we built a culture that systematically solves problems, or did we just create a "Toyota copycat"?  What i've seen in the last 6 mos in the ways of problem solving and increased organization leads me to believe we are on a good path towards employee involvement...but without constant and consistent management encouragement I strongly believe all these gains will be lost.

So whichever way you go to implement a "lean environment", remember the focus is on the people and not the tools/concepts that others have developed.  Those will come with time, either by your teachings or their design.

AF

Toyota and Taking Action!

"We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action.  There are many things one doesn't understand and therefore, we ask them why don't you just go ahead and take action; try to do something?  You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn't like so you can redo it once again.  So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge.  - Fuijio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation, 2002" (Liker, 2003)

I love this line from Fuijio Cho, coincidentally it's the first quote in the first chapter by Jeffrey Liker's book "The Toyota Way".   Learning through failure...how cool is that?  I am anything but a patient person, and the struggle I fight everyday is people afraid to make a decision.  This comes from both sides of the wall (more like every way you look).  Customers afraid to make a decision on a spec, employees afraid to make a decimation on a part or piece, managers afraid to make a decision on quality...it occurs constantly.

Now, is this always the wrong thing, is it always bad to not make a decision...of course not.  But not making a decision causes waste.  It's waste for an employee to ask a manager or another employee, it's waste for a manager to ask a director, it's waste for a director to defer to a higher power.  Whats more wasteful (and i'll say the most) is being 100% sure, what's it cost to be 100% sure? A lot!

I'm definitely guilty of all this, and what I watch from observing myself (80% of the time) is that I know what decision I want to make, but i'm looking for reinforcement.  It doesn't matter in the end, the decision was either right or wrong, but having that backup or that sign off or that email we can use to eliminate any personal wrong doing at a later date is important to us.

Going back to the quote, we need to fail...we need it!  We need to be yelled at (in my opinion) or know that we made a bad call.  What i've noticed in a great employee vs an "Ok" one, the good one's make more decisions, and are confident in their ways.  Do they make bad decisions  absolutely  but we trust them to make more and when they screw up take the honest feedback.

So the art of failing is absolutely critical! Do it often

AF